Ethan Jackson

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Dr. Ethan Jackson is a Senior Researcher and Director in the Clinical Sensing & Analytics Group at Microsoft Healthcare NExT. His research focuses on intelligent systems that make people – and the environments around them – healthier. Ethan’s background is in cyber-physical systems, program verification, and programming languages, which he applies to develop novel health-related technologies.

Ethan directs Project Premonition, an advanced health project which aims to detect the movements of potential pathogens in the environment, before they cause outbreaks in humans. This system employs drones, robotic mosquito traps, and metagenomics to find, collect, and analyze mosquitoes for both known and unknown viruses. It also collects big data on mosquito behavior to better inform epidemiological models and public health organizations. This project is part of Microsoft Healthcare NExT.

Ethan is also the creator of the FORMULA system for building domain specific programming languages and enabling formal analysis of complex software, which has been used in large academic and industrial settings. He is also the co-creator of the P programming language which allows developers to specify complex systems of communicating asynchronous components, and has been used to design critical components of Microsoft Windows.

Ethan joined Microsoft Research 2007 after receiving his PhD from Vanderbilt University in Computer Science.